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Online Safety: Facebook

FACEBOOK

Age Restriction: 13
This is Facebook and Messenger’s minimum age.

Facebook is the most used social networking service worldwide with 2.07 billion monthly active users, although recent statistics have shown teenagers are using it less. The service, which enables users to connect with friends and family as well as make new connections, requires everyone to be at least 13 years old before they can create an account. Most young people will have a positive experience when they access Facebook but there are some potential issues to look out for.

What do children and young people dislike about it?

The main things children say that they don’t like about Facebook and Messenger were:

  • Receiving friend requests or messages from people they don’t.
  • Seeing inappropriate or upsetting posts or pages that are shared.
  • The amount of adverts and spam posts that you can’t really control.

What do children and young people like about it?

The main things that children and young people told us they like about Facebook and Messenger were:

  • You can use it to communicate with friends and family around the world.
  • It helps you to keep up to date with what’s going on with friends and in the news.

It’s entertaining as there are lots of funny videos and memes that are shared.

TIPS

PRIVACY SETTINGS
You can access the Privacy screen by first clicking on the small star icon on the top right of the screen, then selecting PRIVACY from the drop down menu. Facebook provides the following options to lock down each type of information you have given them, not all options will be available, it just depends on the type of information being shared. The options are:

  • Everyone -this will allow everyone in the world to see information flagged with this option.
  • Friend of Friends -only your friends and their friends will be able to see this information. Be warned it’s not as small a circle of people as you may think.
  • Only Friends -we would suggest this is the setting you will want to use most often as it provides control over your updates but still allows you to socialise with people you know.
  • No One – use this to make sure certain information is shared with no one.
  • Customise – select individual people to share information with. Useful if you want to share your email address with only one person or a very small group of people.

BLOCKING/IGNORING FRIEND REQUESTS
Facebook notifies a user when a friend request is received or a request to connect on Messenger. The user will be asked if they want to accept or deny/ignore the request or  connection. We suggest that parents/cares advise young people not to accept requests from people they don’t know.

CONTROL WHO CAN CONTACT YOU

By default this is set up as ‘Basic Filtering’ to allow friends and people you may know the opportunity to send you a message. If you want only friends to be able to contact you, you can increase the filtering on your inbox. Other messages will then be diverted to your ‘other’ folder which you can access from the Messages screen.
If you wish to control who can find you on Facebook based on the email address or telephone number you used to sign up to Facebook then you can do so by first clicking on the arrowhead at the top right of any page and then clicking ‘Settings’.

 

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